Egg & Cheese on a Bagel at [redacted]

not much to say doesn't mean nothing happened

I have a rule that I’m never going to name a place I didn’t love. It’s so hard to run a small business, and until this country decides it cares about something more than pure profit it will always be hard. I don’t want to make it harder. Also, I figure that mediocre places will go out of business eventually anyway. And maybe other people will be super into it. I only want to name things I love, but it feels worthwhile to talk about the in-between.

It wasn’t a particularly terrible or glorious year, but it was a full one. I didn’t achieve as much as I wanted to, and yeah I know my brain is poisoned by capitalism, I am working on it (see: this newsletter). I didn’t move as much as I wanted to. I got a job I wanted. I wrote small things and worked on a big thing that might go nowhere but I want to see to the end of the line. I bumbled through raising a toddler, who continues to be the best and occasionally the worst. I [redacted]. I felt like I struggled fruitlessly and often, but the high points were very sweet. I ate a lot of breakfast sandwiches.

Egg & Cheese on a Bagel at [redacted]

We were grabbing breakfast before a dentist appointment and I wanted to go somewhere that wasn’t a chain. We was me and Sean, we are married and co-creators of a young cartoon character who loves toast and Bluey and Richard Scarry books and chuckles like she’s getting away with something, even though you just handed it to her (it’s the best). He looks like this drinking an okay mocha:

The sandwich was a weird mix of care and afterthought, or rather different priorities: it was a cheap, commercial bagel, which almost always keeps a bagel sandwich from greatness for me. It was bready, way too light, and oddly a tiny bit sweet. he over-easy, semi-runny fried egg was a nice surprise — I was expecting a microwaved situation, which isn’t bad but a freshly fried egg is good. Someone put effort into this sandwich but the vibes were off. The egg was topped by a mostly-melted slice of lightly burnished American. It was all really fresh and gooey and runny, all good things, but when a bagel is just warm bread (and everything else doesn’t shine) I have a hard time getting behind it. It was okay. Not great, not terrible, I wouldn’t get it again but I’m not mad I had it. Some egg sandwiches are like that. It feels important to document them anyway; it’s grounding and puts things in perspective (yes, every therapist who was like have you thought about journaling, you were right). Writing things down reminds me I’m here.

I hope your year was everything you wanted it to be, or you just got through it alive. Like Mariame Kaba says, may next year bring us more justice and some peace.

P.S. Should I make an end-of-year list? Top 23 of 2023? I should be working on five other things which means I’m probably going to do it.